You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights

According to Quote Investigator, the earliest located version is in H. Jackson Brown Jr.’s Live and Learn and Pass It On (Rutledge Hill Press, 1991), p. 85, credited only to a contributor aged 52. That version says “a rainy holiday” and refers to a man rather than a person. By 25 March 2003 Carolyn Bremer’s Carolina Morning News column printed a changed version as part of an already circulating message attributed to Angelou’s seventieth birthday. The purported 1998 birthday date is the message’s claim, not a witnessed 1998 publication. Quote Investigator concludes that the Angelou linkage is spurious. Both dated print sources are known here through Quote Investigator’s citations; neither the book page nor the newspaper was independently inspected. This run did not search Angelou’s copyrighted complete works, and the actual contributor’s name and first attachment to Angelou remain unknown.

1. 1991Earliest found · credited to An unnamed contributor, age 52Brown’s compilation prints an unnamed 52-year-old contributor’s lesson about a rainy holiday, luggage and Christmas lights; this is the earliest version located by Quote Investigator.I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he handles these three things: a rainy holiday, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.H. Jackson Brown Jr., written and compiled, Live and Learn and Pass It On: People ages 5 to 95 share what they’ve discovered about life, love, and other good stuff (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991), p. 85. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. 25 March 2003Credited to Maya AngelouCarolyn Bremer’s column reprints the saying in a circulating message credited to Angelou, changing the rainy holiday to a rainy day and the man to a person.I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights.Carolyn Bremer, “Spring Has Sprung Around Town,” Beautiful Bluffton By the Sea column, Carolina Morning News, Bluffton Bulletin section, 25 March 2003, p. 3. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

This saying circulates as a lesson by Maya Angelou about judging character from everyday frustrations. Quote Investigator traces an earlier version to a collection of life lessons submitted by people identified only by their ages. A newspaper later printed it within a circulating message falsely presented as Angelou’s seventieth-birthday reflections.

A person’s response to small inconveniences can be more revealing than their behavior when everything goes well.

Wisdom

• The soul is dyed by the thoughts. Marcus Aurelius
• But when you’re famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. Marilyn Monroe
• There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. Charles Bukowski
• Look at you comforting others with the words you wish someone had said to you. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• But fame is not really for a daily diet, that’s not what fulfills you. It warms you a bit but the warming is temporary. It’s like caviar, you know, it’s good to have caviar but not when you have it every meal every day. Marilyn Monroe

• quoteinvestigator.com/2014/12/17/luggage

“You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights” Attributed to Maya Angelou. No. An earlier version was credited only to a contributor aged 52 in H. Jackson Brown Jr.’s 1991 compilation; Quote Investigator traces the Angelou credit to a later circulating message. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/a-rainy-day-lost-luggage-and-tangled-christmas-tree-lights/ (checked 26 October 2026).

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